Stevens was a soldier in France during World War I. He did more than fight, though. He published his Paul Bunyan stories in Stars and Stripes.
After the war he knocked around the country as an itinerant laborer, educating himself in local libraries wherever he went. He published poetry in Saturday Evening Post, and more Paul Bunyan stories in American Mercury.
Stevens’ 1945 novel Big Jim Turner, about an itinerant working man and poet who grew up around Knox, Idaho (now a ghost town), has many autobiographical elements in it.
His best-known work, though, is probably his Paul Bunyan book (pictured), published in 1925. Stevens died in Seattle in 1971.